


The Captured Dreamer

by KS_Claw



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Narcolepsy, One-sided Blacksand, Sandy wat r u doing? Stahp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 18:32:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3299603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KS_Claw/pseuds/KS_Claw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From the kink meme: Pitch is a widower and single father with a strange problem: he finds himself falling asleep, without warning, at random and unpredictable times. It’s starting to scare him; he could drop off behind the wheel, in the middle of cooking, crossing the street…he could hurt or kill himself, or worse, his young daughter. He’s tried everything, but none of the doctors he’s seen have been able to explain it or make it stop.</p><p>It might, however, have something to do with the small golden man who appears in his dreams every time he drifts off…</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Captured Dreamer

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt fill for a post on the RoTG Kink meme found [here](http://rotg-kink.dreamwidth.org/3036.html?thread=6165724). I’ve done a mini!fill for this before called “Final dream”, and then got inspired to write more. Hope you enjoy!

“So, Mr. Black. Why don’t we start from the beginning? Your file from your previous doctor has most of the information, but I would like to hear things in your words.”   
  
Pitch Black frowned, and shrugged a bit. “I don’t see why not…” He said slowly, “only there isn’t much to tell.”  
  
“I’ve had strange dreams my whole life… Not that I dreamed all the time, of course, because I’ve certainly not been asleep  _all_  the time. But whenever I’ve dreamed, there’s always been two consistent themes. One was about butterflies, which eventually lead to my career as a lepidopterist, and the other… well, I don’t really know how to describe it.”  
  
“Please try, Mr. Black?”   
  
Again, he shrugged a bit. “I think I might be on an island? It feels like an island anyway, and I’m walking along a beach. Out in the water, I think I can see what looks like mermaids, and on the island itself… it seems like there’s a sort of castle? I’m never quite sure. It always seems to change shape, and always when I’m not looking directly at it. One moment it might be a castle, the next some kind of ship, then a conch shell… but again, it’s a dream, so of course it’s not consistent.” He snorted, “dream logic, I think someone calls it.”  
  
“Does anything else happen in this dream?”  
  
“Not always… Sometimes, I feel like I’m spending hours just walking around. When I was little, I often dreamed that I was playing in the sand, building sandcastles, or sometimes chasing golden butterflies. As I got older, I began wanting to explore. General curiosity, I suppose, about how big the island had to be. And in all the years where I’ve had that dream, I’ve somehow never found an end to it. It’s either the changing castle that keeps me out of the loop, or just the dream in general that makes me feel that.”  
  
“Has there ever been any moments where you haven’t dreamed about this island, Mr. Black?”  
  
“Not really?” Pitch replied, but then frowned in thought. “No, no that’s not true… There have been a few instances. Mostly in times when I’ve been in great distress. The first time… it had to be when I was a little boy, and I lost my parents. A car accident. My dad had fallen asleep behind the wheel, and he and my mother were killed on the spot.” He shook his head. “I was taken in by an aunt. She took good care of me, and from what I remember, she let me handle the grief in my own way. Mostly by letting me sleep for a long time… she’d wake me up to get food, or get washed, but the rest of the time, I would just… lie there and sleep. It went on for days, until she got me to see a grief counselor.”  
  
“And in that time, you didn’t dream about the island?”  
  
“No. It was as if someone had pulled a veil over my eyes. Like, I would go to sleep and I would wake up, but I wouldn’t remember having dreamed at all.” Again, he shrugged. “Strangely enough, it didn’t bother me. I had always felt safe there, and yet somehow… it was as if I was being kept away from it for my own protection. As if something terrible would happen, should I dream of the island while I was grieving.”  
  
“It is not an usual train of thought. Some people lose themselves in certain fantasies when awake, so it is possible to be lost as well if asleep.”  
  
“I suppose so,” Pitch replied thoughtfully, but shrugged. “In any case, I’ve never had reasons to question it. After all, they were just dreams.”   
  
“You said there had been a few instances, of you not having those dreams?”  
  
“Well, like I said, it’s been during times I’ve been in distress. I caught a nasty bout of bronchitis when I was a teenager, and I was in a fever haze for days. In the times I managed to get some sleep, I dreamed of a lot of other things, though exactly what I can’t recall, but not of the island. The same thing happened when I had to get an operation to get my appendix removed. The surgeon put me under, and while they say you can have the most crazy dreams, I couldn’t remember a single thing.” He drew in a deep breath, and let it out in a heavy sigh.  
  
“And then of course… then there was the time when I lost Katie.”  
  
“Your wife?”   
  
“Yes… it was very sudden. We’d thought for all these years that she was healthy as a horse! That nothing was wrong. Then one day, she went to tennis practice and she just…  _collapsed._  And the autopsy could reveal, that she had died of a heart failure, a rare kind you don’t spot until it’s too late.” He shook his head slowly. “It shook Seraphina and I very badly. And that… that was also when my condition began.”  
  
“Your narcoleptic fits?”  
  
“Yes. In the beginning, I didn’t think much of it.” Pitch frowned, fiddling absently with a pencil in his hands. “I did like when I’d lost my parents… Seraphina and I slept away our grief, until one morning when I decided to pull myself together and find a counselor for us both. I got really lucky with Sera. Dr. Bunnymund is his weight worth in gold… he doesn’t need to talk much with her, he just has to look at her while she’s sitting and drawing, or making a puzzle or something, and he can tell how she’s doing.” He frowned at that. “…She’s definitely doing better than me.”  
  
“How so?”  
  
“Well…” He frowned, pausing in his fiddling with the pencil. “It’s hard to explain… Seraphina and I only have each other. I haven’t got many friends… friends, I should say acquaintances, outside my work at the university, and they’re not the kind who come around to check on you. My boss is the only exception, but that’s probably only because he’s actually gotten to know me, aside from after-work drinks.”  
  
“He has been very lenient when it comes to your condition?”  
  
“Mr. Manfred has been absolutely wonderful…” Pitch agreed with a sigh, sounding relieved. “He’s told me I could work at home, and he’s been lenient with some of the deadlines, because he knows I can usually deliver. It’s also given me more time with Sera, which is something we’ve both needed… if not for the bloody condition, then things would be almost perfect.”  
  
“It hasn’t affected her?”  
  
“Not in the slightest… She would sometimes take naps with me, but aside from that, she’d maybe sit with her friends in her room or she’d do her homework, and usually she’d wake me up so I could cook dinner for us both… or, at least she did, until the accident.”  
  
“Yes… says here there was an incident with boiling water?”  
  
Pitch nodded in response, frowning hard now. “It was the strangest thing… I didn’t even really feel tired. I was in the middle of cooking, boiling hot water for some spaghetti and working on the sauce on the side… and next thing I know, I’m lying on the floor, and my legs are, excuse my language, hurting like  _hell!_  I had just passed out right there, and brought the pot  _and_  the pan with sauce down over my legs.” He grimaced. “I got away with first degree burns, and even then it was only because Seraphina was quick. She grabbed the little shower-head by the sink that we use for cleaning up dishes, and turned the water on the cold pipe, before she quickly sprayed my legs, until the sauce had come off. All I could think about was working up my strength to get the stove turned off, before something else could happen… Next thing I remember, is a paramedic shaking me awake, while his colleague is cutting off my pants to look at the damage.” He drew a deep breath at that. “Clever girl that she is, Seraphina had called 911.”  
  
“And then what happened?”  
  
“They brought me in and had me looked over. My neighbor, Mrs. Bennett? Her son Jamie is in the same class as Sera. Anyway, she took Seraphina in to watch over her. I have no doubt I scared my poor girl half to death. Ever since then, we’ve both… well, I let Seraphina visit the Bennett household for dinner, and I’ve taken to eating microwave meals. It’s not much, but at least all I have to worry about is dozing off while I’m waiting for it to finish heating up.”  
  
“And your dreams?””  
  
Pitch sighed at that.  
  
“That’s the thing… While I was passed out on the kitchen floor, I was dreaming about the island. Only, there was a difference this time. And it has followed me ever since then.”  
  
“What kind of difference?”  
  
He frowned in thought, sitting silently for a while, before he finally replied.  
  
“I’m walking along the beach, with the mermaids singing and the castle changing like it always does… But this time, for once in I have no idea how long, I am not alone. Walking, or rather not walking, more like floating in the air next to me, is a strange, golden little man. He’s holding my hand and he’s smiling at me, as if he has just found the most wonderful treasure.”  
  
At that, he looked up at the counselor, his eyes worried.  
  
“And I have not the faintest idea why, but it feels wrong! As if it is suddenly not my dream, but that little man’s… and he doesn’t want to let me go.

**Author's Note:**

> A lepidopterist, for those who don't know, is someone who studies butterflies and moths.


End file.
